But Loving Him Is Red
by define-serenity
Summary: [Sebastian/Blaine] Sebastian Smythe and Blaine Anderson are members of rival gang families. Any interaction between the Smythe and Anderson family that isn't business or murder is unthinkable. Until the two crash together and start a dangerous relationship that could prove their undoing. The relationship they build could mean their deaths.
1. Part 1

**author's notes:** posted for Seblaine Week 2016, day 2: **mobsters/criminals**. title taken from _Red_ by Taylor Swift.

 **warnings:** angst, depiction of violence, hate/rough sx (though not really), mention of character deaths

.

.

 **BUT LOVING HIM IS RED**

part one

.

 _You're a runner,_  
 _and I am my father's son_  
 _I am my father's son_  
 _I am my father's son_

.

For lack of any other word, it was forbidden. Not ill advised, or a bad idea, or a preference their families had casually uttered. No, this prohibition ran deep within their veins, their blood different colors for all they knew. Desires such as theirs were the verboten fruit in paradise the likes of which sent empires to their knees—not their sexual preferences, _but this specific need_ would meet with hell on earth, fire and brimstone raining from the heavens, worse than the original sin itself.

Any interaction between the Smythe and Anderson family that wasn't business or murder was unthinkable.

And for the past seven months they'd committed every unthinkable offence known to their fathers. Fornication, lies, an affair stitched along the seams that held their worlds together and threatened to unravel them every single time they crashed back together.

They could both lose their families over this carnal defiance. They could lose their lives should the wrong people find out.

But they risk it.

.

It started in a whirlwind of bloodshed.

A gang war between the Andersons and the Smythes that raged for months; blood ran free in the gutters, guts painted the sidewalks red, and fear blanketed the city in a cold dead quiet.

Other families, the Sylvestris and Jiulia alike, regarded the violence as a good thing; with the Smythes and Andersons at war their businesses boomed, and nothing could persuade them to intervene.

By the time the two families sit down for negotiations eight are dead, casualties on both sides, including Landon Anderson's eldest son Cooper. They agree on the flimsiest of terms, a precarious agreement built on fresh graves, a need to cease the killing, stop all the violence, institute a time of mourning for all those lost to the mindlessness of violence.

Sebastian Smythe, twenty-two, witnesses the handshake between Vincent Smythe and Landon Anderson with veiled disdain — he lost his best friend Hunter in a shooting last week, and while he understands the politics inherent to his world, while that handshake will become law the moment they leave this room, he can't help but wonder who the next casualty might be. His father? Quinn? Marley?

Blaine Anderson, twenty years old, a self-educated young man, traces his thumb over the butt of the gun hidden at the small of his back, apprehensive about the fragile cease-fire. The last bullet fired from his gun split through Hunter Clarington's skull like butter, and the Smythes' Heir Apparent, Sebastian, has never let go of a grudge without exacting his own private revenge.

Sebastian had been at college for several years receiving the same education his father, grandfather and great-grandfather enjoyed, but a tiger didn't change its stripes. Not in their world. The stories spread far and wide, of people disappeared, people gone in the wake of Sebastian's rancor, though Blaine's not worried. He can handle a Smythe.

"Stay on your side of the Corridor, Landon," the senior Smythe advises, a threat latent in the words he doesn't utter as his eyes trip along Blaine's body. _Wouldn't want you to lose another son._

But neither of them knows who fired the first shot.

So it remains unsaid.

Three days later Cooper Anderson is interred at the local cemetery next to his grandfather. Landon Anderson doesn't speak all day, but never leaves his wife's side as she cries, screams at God, loses herself in hysteria. Blaine and Rachel are by their sister-in-law's side as instructed, their nephew too young to know what's happening.

Across town Hunter Clarington is buried next to his father, who died in much the same way he did. No one can tell his mother what happened, her heart too frail to take the truth. Few people attend, but Sebastian stands over his friend's grave vowing vengeance.

.

The divide between the families traced back to Prohibition in the 1920s, when both the Smythes and Andersons had a stake in the illegal smuggling of alcohol, of speakeasies tucked in shadowy alleys. The Smythes brought in expensive tobacco, the Andersons Irish whiskey no politician, police commander or harbormaster could resist. There was an unspoken agreement that one family wouldn't impede on the other's territory and vice versa, and one family wouldn't attempt to poach the other's trade.

Unfortunately, as all great stories would have it, love sent it all tumbling down.

A great great third cousin Smythe had once married a great great aunt Anderson, but neither family made a big deal out of it. Until Francis Smythe, head of the family in 1928, caught his wife in bed with a son of Blaine's great-grandfather — Cecilia Smythe never saw the light of day again; Walter Anderson fell off the top of a high rise in a supposed drunken stupor.

The relationship between the Andersons and the Smythes had been hostile ever since.

Neither was to blame. Both were to blame. It depends on whom you asked.

The Smythes and Andersons stuck to much the same business ventures in the decades that followed; tobacco, high-priced booze, branching out into clubs that ran girls and drugs. Landon Anderson laundered money through various dummy corporations hiding behind real estate purchases; Vincent Smythe ran a casino on the outskirts of town. Both attracted high profile clientele. Both greased the palms of quite a few local politicians.

An area known to the locals as the Corridor stood as neutral ground — a broad lively boardwalk of nightclubs, shops, bordellos and bars, the Corridor ran through the territories carved out by either family.

No Smythe ventured East of the Corridor unless they had a death wish.

No Anderson ventured West.

.

Blaine spent most of his Friday nights at the local gay club Azure. Since Cooper would've inherited their father's empire it made no difference to his family where his tastes lay, and so he never hid his proclivities.

Ever since his brother died there had been talks about him taking over the reins should his father step down before his nephew's old enough, though he can't see that happening any time soon. His father was a businessman, first and foremost, and saw most things in life as trades and deals to be closed — Blaine had been deemed unfit to fill that position a long time ago, and nothing's changed since then.

Landon Anderson demanded attention wherever he went, a quality he distinctly lacked. No violent man by any means his father proved ruthless nonetheless, sending others out to do his dirty work — most often that task fell on his shoulders. That's what he's good at, so that became his bespoke place in the empire.

In the meantime there was no need for him to pretend. He wasn't about to tiptoe back into the closet for appearance's sake.

As a respectable establishment Azure was modeled after the old Playboy Club of the 1960s — Old Hollywood glitter and glamor, private booths of black leather lining the walls, small tables around a dance floor, a stage for artists, the bar a black gleaming surface, and scantily clad waiters managed by the charming Adam Crawford. The Evans family privately owned the club, but Adam proved his managing skills years ago when he whipped the inexperienced bunch of hired monkeys into professional waiters. Now boys and men alike begged to work at Azure.

Contrary to the rumors, Adam never exploited his waiters. There were private rooms at the back of the club where customers could satiate their appetites, but no one touched the personnel but for the tips shoved into the tiny black shorts, or hooked around the only other garment the waiters wore — a stylish black bowtie.

Adam had only ever been with one customer: Sebastian Smythe himself. It was an unspoken rule inside the club that Adam belonged to Sebastian. No one talked about it, but everyone knew. The two of them had been in a serious relationship for several years until Sebastian was tapped as his father's heir. Sebastian's older brother, Alexander, generally regarded irresponsible, lazy, and feeble-minded, would be passed up in favor of Sebastian, who'd proved he had a head for business as well as academia. Now engaged to Quinn Fabray, a girl from a wealthy and highly respectable family, Sebastian broke things off with Adam last year, something that did not go over well with the handsome Brit.

Every time Sebastian came around the club now –because he still had his fair share of sexual exploits– Adam promptly gave him the cold shoulder.

Not unlike tonight.

As the club stood on neutral ground, both he and Sebastian stuck to their own corners when their paths crossed; Sebastian never wanted to cause trouble for Adam, and his volatility extended solely to those who provoked him. His interactions with Sebastian remained limited to the occasional hostile stare at Azure, and he had no intention of expanding them beyond that.

"Mr Anderson." Adam comes his way that Friday night, balancing a whiskey sour on a tray, right next to a room key. Number 7. "Courtesy of the gentleman at the bar."

Adam slinks away with a suggestive wink and a shake of his ass, leaving the key and the drink on the table.

It's a clear and bold invitation.

The key.

A stranger asking to have a good time with him without learning his name, without knowing much of anything about him. The thought makes his blood weighty in his veins. He glances toward the bar, where a young man raises his drink at him; he has spiky light hair, a tall and lanky build, legs that go on for days. Just his type.

Blaine raises his own glass in greeting and sips his drink, thinking over his options.

Azure is his playground, his alone time where he's left to his own devices. He's not opposed to harmless flings, but he prefers to trespass in private. People know his face around here, his name even better, so he should tread carefully.

Then again, Adam runs a respectable establishment; discretion might as well be his middle name.

It's a split second decision, as these things usually are. He downs the rest of his drink and picks up the key, making sure the boy at the bar sees him before he makes his way to the backrooms, number 7 in particular.

He inserts the key, turns the lock, soon inside a darkened room, lit only by the light strips lining the floor.

He locks the door behind him. House rules.

A small bathroom at the back of the room houses a shower and a sink lined with scented oils and shampoos, dark towels camouflaged against the mosaic tiles, the backrooms' style far more modern than the rest of the club. To his right stood a cupboard, no doubt loaded with toys, the mirror above it rimmed with heavy gold leaf. The king-size bed draws most of the attention, draped in what he assumes are dark colors too, condoms on the pillows. Small as it is the room has all the necessities, clean enough for his tastes.

The lock snaps in the door behind him, the twin nr°7 key granting access to the room. He turns back in time to make out a tall and lanky silhouette, jeans, leather jacket, before the closing door chases most of the light from the room.

"Mind if we keep the lights down?" comes a soft voice– Curious. He'd imagined the boy would sound different. "I'm kind of shy."

He smiles, easily charmed by that kind of shyness. "No problem."

Shrugging out of his jacket the nameless boy shuffles closer, the room electrified, his shoulders crawling with the anticipation of the sweetest kind of release. The times he allows himself these flings are few and far between, though he's not sure why. As his father puts it, he has the world at his fingertips ; he could have anyone he wanted. Yet the few flings he's had were fast and rushed, over before they really started. Satisfying, yet brief.

"I can't believe I'm with the infamous Blaine Anderson."

Lips trip haphazardly up the back of his neck, along with a weighted shiver at being recognized so easily. That's no surprise.

"You're not armed, are you?"

He laughs as greedy hands slip around his waist, lost in the clean-cut scent of his stranger, no cologne, a little sweat and soap, a scent that can only come from another man.

"No."

One hand travels down and brushes over his crotch, palming slow circles as lips explore bare skin. His head falls back and meets a bony shoulder, body unlocking under the gentle ministrations; his breathing stutters, dick hardening at the thought of what's about to happen.

"You like that, huh?" the boy's voice lowers, sparking down his spine like fireworks.

"Hm-mm." He bites down on his lip to keep from moaning, turning in his lover's arms. Soft lips find his instantly, a hot tongue running along his mouth — his head turns foggy but he surrenders all the same, his bones aching with a need for this.

He doesn't do this nearly enough; he was taught never to relinquish control to another man long before his desires became apparent. He never drops his guard; he's the man who walks into a room and takes note of all the exits, logs any and all escape routes and carries a backup piece around his ankle. Tonight though, in the wake of losing Cooper, in the wake of all the tragedy that dredged up painful events he's loath to remember — tonight he can let go, he can surrender, he can stop being the man this life spun him into and be faceless, nameless, get off with a complete stranger.

The kiss encompasses all the things he wants but can't have, his soul heavy with darkness that threatens to envelop him. He doesn't want a normal life with a nine to five, but sometimes it's nice to entertain the thought that he could, that he could drive off into the sunset , live a life where death would come to collect when he turned gray and old. But that's not what life has in store for him.

He breathes the boy in like cigarette smoke, his lungs opening up around an acidic burn, a tension unspooling in his chest he barely ever acknowledges as his constant companion. A thumb circles one of his temples, fingers massaging the base of his skull , and he dares to sneak a hand over the boy's crotch, still soft.

"No need to skip right to dessert," the boy whispers, and a few seconds later he's shoved face-first up against the wall, heart beating dents into the wallpaper. Yes, he needs to be owned, he needs to be dominated, needs to be taken so hard he loses all bearings and can't sit comfortably for a week.

Something cold presses against the back of his skull.

Followed by the too distinct cock of a trigger.

Ice coats his veins.

"Bang," the boy says, the barrel of the gun digging into his skin. "You're dead."

His heart calms.

One door.

One exit.

Finger on the trigger implies an amateur. One he let far too close.

"You're making a huge mistake."

"How's that?" the boy asks. "An eye for an eye. Isn't that what the Good Book says? You kill Hunter. I kill you."

Only then does he recognize the voice.

" _Smythe_."

Bile rises in his throat, fingernails digging into the wall, every muscle in his body primed.

Not yet. No guarantee he can get the upper hand.

"Maybe I should kill the Evans kid," Sebastian says. "You two are close, right?"

"Fight's over, Sebastian. Our fathers–"

"Our fathers know jack shit!" Sebastian shouts, losing control as the gun skids down his neck, the magazine audibly shaking in its encasing.

Still lethal. Too risky.

"You shot my best friend in the back of the head," Sebastian says. "Couldn't even tell his mother what happened."

He could try and reason with Sebastian, tell him he isn't some trigger-happy monkey that shoots at anything that moves. He follows orders. But Sebastian's right, their fathers had no clue what it was like to be on the streets anymore, locked behind their desks each day barking orders. They don't know what they lost. Does Sebastian know what he lost? What Vanessa lost? Does he realize Cooper's son will only ever have stories of his father, not memories?

He grits his teeth together. "Your family took my brother."

Sebastian expels a breath, the gun sinking down to his shoulder, and he takes his chance—

He grabs back for Sebastian's gun arm and turns around, the 9mm dropping to the floor. He socks Sebastian in the jaw and takes advantage of the confusion to reach down for the backup gun strapped to his ankle. Pushing Sebastian face-down onto the bed he straddles him around the waist, effectively trapping his arms too, and presses his gun to the back of Sebastian's head.

Two can play that game.

And he plays it a whole lot better.

He won't pull the trigger, though. He won't start another war.

"Not going soft on me, are you, killer?" Sebastian laughs at his own joke, nearly coughing up his lungs once he runs out of air.

"Hunter tried to sell our boys some of your stuff." He leans in, breath breezing along Sebastian's cheek, the fight in the other man's body a victory too personal to describe. "Added his own profit margin. That's what got him killed."

Sebastian struggles to break free. "You're a goddamn liar, Anderson."

He climbs off Sebastian, securing the 9mm behind his back, and unlocks the door.

One way out.

"Believe what you want. If it hadn't been me it would've been Puck. And you know he leaves a much bigger mess."

Noah 'Puck' Puckerman was the go-to guy for hits that didn't need to happen strictly in-house, and worked for whoever paid the most; he got theatrical in his methods of disposal. It made for a scary deterrent, but some kills didn't need the visibility. The only signature he ever left behind was a bullet. He liked the clean kill, collected his casings, even though he wiped them for prints.

Sebastian sits up and wipes at the blood on his lips. "You said you weren't armed."

"Word of advice, Smythe," he says. "I'm always armed."

He straps his own gun around his ankle again.

"You do anything like that again and I bury you next to your friend."

Sebastian jumps up. "This isn't over, Anderson."

He leaves the room nearly tripping over his own feet, his right hand opening and closing at his side; his skin's too tight yet doesn't sit right in places, like an ill-fitted suit. His heartbeat picks up again and he can't stand still and goddamn—

How could he be so stupid? How could he drop his guard? How could he let himself be taken for a fool?

He walks home along the boardwalk, seeing nothing, no one, his skin threadbare; he takes a sharp left once he reaches the mansion and heads straight for the fitness room, promptly ignoring whatever greetings he receives along the way, if any.

He strips out of his shirt and tapes up his hands, almost breaking out in tears the second his fist hits the black leather punching bag. So stupid. So goddamn stupid. An Anderson doesn't let his guard down. Least of all around a Smythe.

"What happened?"

"Not in the mood, Rachel," he utters between two punches, disregarding his twin sister's pleas. She means well, she always does, but few people can reason with him when he's like this.

It's been the same for days, the tension in the house so sharp it could cut skin, while they all precariously tried to move around the space Cooper used to occupy. They were never that close, circumstance stood in the way of that, but in his world there was no value greater than that of family.

Cooper wasn't meant to die, his life expectancy lay much higher than his or people like Noah Puckerman — Cooper had been destined to lead, to take their father's place, not perish in the street like a regular foot soldier. His father lost the son he couldn't bear to; his mother cried for another child; and Rachel shrunk ever smaller in this house full of pain.

The Smythes killed his brother and _he let Sebastian kiss him_. What's wrong with him?

"Stop hurting yourself."

Rachel grabs his left wrist when the tape around his hand stains darker, the skin broken underneath, but he needs the pain. He understands pain. Sometimes he thinks it's the only thing in this world he does understand. If he shoots a man above the knee he inflicts little damage but a maximum amount of distress, a great way to extort information; if he shoots at someone's throat at the right angle he can paralyze him, inflict pain without the victim being able to move.

Pain makes a weak man weaker. It makes a strong man stronger.

One look into Rachel's hazel eyes nearly sends him to his knees. Is he a weak man or a strong man? He let a Smythe touch him. He let a Smythe kiss him.

A Smythe killed his brother.

"I made a mistake," he chokes out, his anger transmuting into learnt disgust.

"We all make mistakes, Blaine," Rachel says, their grandmother's wisdom in her voice. "It's how we learn from them that defines us."

Can he live with this? Can he learn? All he'd wanted was to let go, surrender to a body with such heedless abandon he could forget his own name, lose control and forget about death for a while, forget the ever-growing list of souls he ferried on his shoulders , the darkness that grew every day. Maybe he'd even wanted shame, weakness tied into his sexual desires, a need for a whole different kind of release than the one a bullet provided.

"Oh, little brother," Rachel says, even though she's mere minutes older than him, and draws him into her chest. "Everything will be okay. You'll see."

Rachel's hand strokes down his back the way their grandmother's used to, followed by a phrase that once had the power to lift his spirits.

"It'll all seem less daunting in the morning sun."

He folds his arms tighter around Rachel and closes his eyes, but highly doubts this pit in his stomach will disappear overnight. The thought that spins through his mind is too distressing.

He let Sebastian Smythe kiss him. And he liked it.

.

If he were any other guy, with any other life, he would have disappeared in his bed for a few days without coming up for air, nourish this dark sense of shame into an honest mistake, one he won't make again. But he's his father's son and he's expected to be strong, without shame, incorruptible in a world built on immorality.

In the bathroom he stares at his own reflection in the mirror long and hard, his dark heavy eyebrows identical to his father's, his brown eyes too, the same good looks that ran in the family. Right now, uncertainty plays around his lips, mouth assailed with the press of another's, an enemy's, and for what? For revenge?

It was bound to happen sooner or later; he's taken too many lives not to attract unwanted attention, attract more enemies, and Sebastian took a calculated risk. Azure was neutral ground, and if he'd succeeded– if he'd splattered his brains across the wall of that backroom both their fathers would have known how little their truce meant. The Smythes took his brother, he killed one of their lieutenants — a handshake didn't erase that.

He runs his fingers through his thick wet curls, pauses over the imaginary impression of the barrel of a gun. Decides to let it go. Sebastian tried and failed. He won't get another shot. There's no point lingering on this.

Righting his shoulders he begins the arduous task of combing back his hair, slicking it back with gel to tame it into submission, hiding the curls he used to give free rein.

They're his mother's curls, his grandmother's, and more often than not they got in the way.

He dresses in black slacks, a black button-up, and a black tie. Holsters a gun around his right ankle. Secures a Smith & Wesson pistol behind his back. Shrugs into a black jacket.

Looking at himself in the mirror he seems a younger version of his father: professional, chic, put together. Yet he'll never measure up. He'll never be the businessman his father is, his brother was, nor the right hand man who can pull strings, grease the right palms. He lost that potential a long time ago.

"Morning, darling."

His mother comes over with a cup of coffee the moment he steps into the kitchen, fussing over his tie a few seconds. He doesn't hug her, and she's stopped expecting him to, but she finds other ways to touch him. She tends his wounds when he gets hurt, mends his clothes, buys him more outfits than he needs.

He wishes he could touch her in return, but then his eyes will fall to her dress, or sweater, or lipstick, registering the ugly green-gray his eyes can't translate.

Red is his father's favorite color on his mom.

He wishes she wouldn't wear it quite so often.

"Your father said you're with Sam all day?"

"Money transport." He nods. "Shouldn't be any trouble."

Sam Evans, his closest friend, or rather, the man he's tasked to protect as often as his father, drives the nondescript van from the Fairfax building where dozens of his father's employees work day and night to launder money, to a bank the next town over that handled their business discreetly. He sat up-front with Sam, one guy in the back with the money, an unmarked car tailing them.

Whenever his mother learned he'd work with Sam something unspooled in her expression. He couldn't say why — a money transport was a prime target not only for rival families but random thugs as well. They took different routes each time, undisclosed until the day in question, and Sam had been known to resort to last-minute improvisation where roadblocks were involved. Over the past ten years five transports had been attacked, only one of those under his supervision. He'd taken a bullet to the shoulder and his mom hadn't given him a moment's rest during his recovery, so her relief when he set out on another run with Sam seemed odd.

But his mother liked Sam, his quick jokes and glib charm, and the fact that he was a family man. He often wondered if his mother saw in Sam whatever she missed in him. As for him, Sam was an easy person to be around — he talked a lot, about the latest pop culture gossip, science fiction and superheroes, his latest obsession with The Great British Bake-Off. Sam didn't require a lot of maintenance.

He sits next to Sam all day with his mind elsewhere, his fingertips tracing along the harsh outline of last night's memory, his skin catching where Sebastian's tongue had teased over his lips.

He startles out of the thought the moment it occurs.

"What's with you today, man?" Sam asks, clinking their beers together. He hasn't touched his. Tradition dictates one of them buys the others a round after a successful drop, a tradition he respected as best he could — he's not collegial in any sense of the word.

"Nothing." He shrugs, tossing a five-dollar bill on top of the bar. "I'm heading home."

"You need a ride?" Sam offers, but experience tells him Sam will be here for another few hours and catch a cab home, ever so reluctant to head home where there's a crying baby waiting for him.

"I'll walk," he throws back over his shoulder, heading for the bar's back exit.

For a moment or two he considers a visit to Azure, maybe loosen up around a few more whiskeys and call a cab at the end of the night too, but he's still too shaken.

It'll never cease to amaze him how a place can change when tainted by experience, how red can disappear in the wake of trauma, how Azure now tasted like—

"Sebastian," he hushes as he steps into the alley behind the bar, the other man leaning back against a black Mercedes-Benz, CLS Class, Black Bison. Wide open to assault.

The metal door behind him screeches shut, nothing but night's air between them.

"You're a hard man to find," Sebastian says, his feet crossed at the ankles, dipped in the glow of a street lantern.

He reaches behind his back on instinct. "And you must have a death wish."

Exit to his left. Exit to his right. Door behind him opens from the inside.

But is Sebastian even armed?

"You were right." Sebastian takes a long drag of the cigarette resting between his lips, a perfect 'o' around the filter, the beaded bracelet around his wrist catching the light. "I asked around about Hunter. Did us both a favor."

His jaw locks. "Didn't do it for you."

"No." Sebastian oscillates a step closer, eyes a lewd trip down his limbs, the air steadily growing thinner. "I don't imagine you did."

The cigarette's discarded on the ground. Sebastian licks his lips. They're inches apart and he can't tell what's happening, whether Sebastian means to intimidate or simply size him up, but he can't shake thoughts of quicksilver. Wild and elusive.

Sebastian captures his lips with his.

Toxic.

He reels back, his back hitting brick while Sebastian continues his forward assault. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Finishing what we started."

His stomach bottoms out, a wild panic traces up his spine, but he's bolted in place. "You're insane," he breathes, that minute shock alloying with a near sense of excitement.

Sebastian clutches a hand around his chin and sneers, "Maybe I am."

He shoves at Sebastian's chest, but he gives easily.

"Seemed pretty eager the other day."

"I didn't know it was you."

"You were willing to screw a complete stranger," Sebastian says. "Other than knowing my face, isn't that exactly what I am to you?"

His lungs fill with water. "I know your name too."

"My name." Sebastian smiles deviously, like he isn't finished trying by a long shot, and chances another step in the wrong direction. "My name doesn't matter this part of town."

Sebastian reaches out a hand and runs a thumb along his lips. It's wrong, it's not allowed, but doesn't his world rest on principles of lawlessness in the first place?

He shivers.

"Neither does yours."

He smacks at Sebastian's arm, torn apart by impossible choices. "Go to hell"—he grits his teeth together, but when Sebastian doesn't back down he hits him in the face. Closed fist. Sebastian staggers a few steps back and that could be his way out, it should be, but what Sebastian said stirred a deep desire inside him. _His name doesn't matter_. It hadn't at Azure and it doesn't — does it? Does it matter now?

Two strong arms catch him off guard, his head smacking hard off the wall as his entire body collides with it, a fist to his face breaking the skin over his lips. His eyesight blurs under the force of the collision, his skull throbbing.

"You look so fine bleeding, Anderson." Sebastian's breath tickles coppery along his lips and his hand closes around his throat, the touch leaving something to be desired.

He understands pain. Maybe he even craves it.

He shoves hard at Sebastian's chest again, catching the taller by surprise because he tumbles backward, barely able to hold himself up by the hood of his car.

Sebastian's eyes catch in his, while a filthy grin pulls at his lips, bound to be as bloody as his. "We about done here?"

Spitting, he drags the back of his hand over his mouth, wiping off as much blood as he can before he closes the distance between their bruised bodies.

"Not even close," he growls, and grabs Sebastian around the neck, pulling him down until their mouths crash together — his name doesn't matter, only their bodies do, only the pain does. Screw duty and his rules, screw the empire built on human skulls. Screw both these great men who have no clue what their lives are like. _Their fathers know jack shit._

Sebastian tastes like blood and cheap cigarettes as he forces his tongue into his mouth, the taller ripping at his shoulders, his shirt, at stitches never healed before biting at his bloodied lip. He hisses at the pain, but yanks at Sebastian's hair in response, biting along his jawline, down his neck, drawing blood at his collarbone, eliciting noises from Sebastian that worm their way inside like parasites.

Before long he impacts with the wall again, face-first this time, his lips leaving smears of blood in the grain of the brick — he's the one gone insane allowing this but Sebastian wastes no time, no room for him to second guess; his lips are at his neck and he kicks his feet apart, Sebastian's groin settling against the cleft of his ass, hard for him already.

Much like last night Sebastian reaches around, but instead of palming him through his pants Sebastian undoes the button, pulls down the zipper, the ensuing skin-to-skin contact deafening his doubt. In his abandon he lets out a deep throaty groan, one that emboldens Sebastian's hand, jerking him off with a few rough strokes. He pushes back against Sebastian's chest in a mad attempt at escape, but lacks the conviction to follow through. He wants this, the inescapable humiliation at the hands of an enemy, the tension, the fight-or-flight responses in both their bodies. The thought that there are no exits at all.

It's a volatile sort of torture, Sebastian tilting his hips against his ass, his grunts and groans and hisses, his hand matching the rhythm of his body. Neither of them speaks. Neither of them needs to. They're just bodies. Nameless. Faceless. Writhing as one.

He hits the wall with a closed fist as he comes, seeing red for a few releasing moments, before the color seeps from the visible spectrum again. He bleeds red as he thrashes into Sebastian's body, his hand unrelenting — he lets Sebastian stroke him until it hurts, until the white hot haze floods his peripheral vision and Sebastian groans his orgasm too, shaking against him.

They breathe hard and he's held together solely by the graces of Sebastian's arm around him, his knees too weak to bear his weight.

What now, he thinks, do they go back to being Blaine and Sebastian? Do they reclaim their names, pretend like nothing happened and turn into enemies once again?

Sebastian moves first, takes a step back, untangling their arms, no other sound but the night hesitantly whispering their names. Smythe. Anderson. What have they done?

He zips up his pants but doesn't turn around, too ashamed to face his enemy.

Sebastian gets in his car and drives off.

Touching his forehead to the brick wall his breath hitches. He's never felt this alive, so aware of every one of his limbs, lungs open and free, never this close to danger — gun fights left him less affected than Sebastian did. He blames the danger, the gun to his head, the shame he invites closer, the forbiddenness of the entire act.

He blames Sebastian, too.

Once he finds his way back home, the walk taking much longer than it should, he sits down in the shower fully clothed, hoping the water will wash away his sins.

.

That night, his mother cries. She mourns the son she lost, her grandson now fatherless, her daughter-in-law widowed in a world that won't see her remarried — it isn't their way. She cries over the innocence he lost over a decade ago. Cherishes the kindness Rachel somehow managed to hold onto. And every night, before catching the few hours of sleep he's forced to suffer through, Blaine listens to his parents' distant conversation, all the more urgent since his brother died. Sometimes they fight. Sometimes they apologize. One thing remains constant.

His mother cries for her children.

There's a soft rap at the bedroom door, which opens moments later.

Rachel never waits for an answer. She knows he doesn't sleep much.

"Can I stay here tonight?"

He pulls back the sheets wordlessly. They haven't shared a bed in over ten years, but when Rachel lies down by his side, when her warmth starts filling the sheets, he can't remember why he ever forced her to sleep on her own. Because his sister's warmth whisks the touch of death off his shoulders, stops his bones from shaking shame and disgust. Makes him forget his split lip, the cracks in his armor, the headache pounding at the back of his head.

Slowly, he lets go of the gun stashed below his pillow.

People say a lot of things about twins, about how they act and think and share the same thoughts. He supposes they're still a bit like that; they read each other like a blind man reads braille, can touch fingertips to pressure points left exposed. But where Rachel comes to him with her pain he requires her to come to him whenever he's hurting; he can't invite the weakness inside, not where others might see. He can't let her see the wounds Sebastian inflicted.

"I got a new violin teacher today," Rachel says, their parents' voices fading into white noise. "His name's Jesse. I really like him."

"But?"

Their father granted Rachel everything her heart desired, his only daughter the apple of his eye who could do no wrong — her latest obsession was the violin, even though she played most other instruments already. Whenever her voice rang through the hallways the house came to life, brightened with its strength and melody.

Rachel hasn't sung for a few weeks.

"Nothing." Rachel shrugs. "He makes me laugh."

Rachel doesn't need to say it for him to hear it; whoever this Jesse is, he's not of their world, and it wouldn't do her well to get attached. The first and last boyfriend Rachel brought home, one tall and broad Finn Hudson, turned tail and ran when he found out what sort of business their family was in. He'll have to meet this Jesse and see what he's made of, see if he's worthy of Rachel's affection.

He'd had a few lovers over the years, whenever he wasn't working, or training, or learning, but never made the mistake of falling in love. Carrying the darkness he does he's not sure he's capable of that kind of commitment. He didn't sleep around like some of the others in his father's employ, nor did he have plans to marry and start a family. That wasn't in the cards for him. Little satisfaction in any of that stuff anyway.

What he did with Sebastian — he'd crossed a line, committed sin with someone from the other side of the border, but he'd never felt so free, so unencumbered, so shameless in the few releasing moments exchanged.

The ghost of a barrel digs into his temple. Dents around his doubt.

He wants to surrender again.

.

His foot settles in a steady tapping rhythm as the night drags on, his knee hitting the underside of the table, the clear ripple in the surface of his drink reminiscent of a childhood memory he's too afraid to touch. He's never been to Azure on a Sunday night, not once, and he suspects neither has Sebastian, but they're both there. Watching each other carefully. As if either one of them could jump up and pull out a gun. As if neither of them would care about the casualties.

Adam serves them both, the other waiters steering clear for fear of falling victim to their feud.

He can't say why he came, why there's this undeniable magnetism between him and Sebastian now. They're on opposite sides of a near physical boundary, now living a secret on that very line — a secret that if uncovered could get them both killed. So what changed?

He'd been dodging questions about his face all day, his swollen lip, the bruise on his jaw; Rachel had fussed over him, forced a few cold compresses on him and insisted on covering up most of the damage. He rarely denied Rachel anything, but how could he lie to his own sister? No two people were closer than him and Rachel — tragedy had ensured they only trusted each other and never kept anything a secret. His instincts were often to protect Rachel from having to see the seedy underside of their father's world, but she never allowed him to carry that burden on his own. She never had. She knew the souls he carried as intimately as he did.

So to now lie to her to save him the shame of his family knowing — is he a weak man, or a strong one?

Weak, he decides, because as Adam walks over with a drink and that same room key he can't help but lick his lips, glance at Sebastian, his breathing deepening around the recollection of their bodies colliding, writhing together in that alleyway. Hidden. Secretive. Forbidden.

"From the gentleman at the bar again."

Adam effectively blocks his direct line of sight to Sebastian, and as his gaze skips to the same boy his eyes met on Friday, Sebastian slips past to get his hands on the nr°7 room key. More than ever he understands Sebastian's need for secrecy; he may have used the boy for his own nefarious purposes –and Sebastian had to know it would bring back the sharp and bitter taste of that night–, but it seems Sebastian's also willing to take that chance.

Maybe Sebastian's as torn up about this as he is.

He takes his sweet time finishing his drink. He holds all the power now, Sebastian waiting for him in the room it all started; if he got up and went home it could all be over, he could stop the lies before he got in too deep and chalk this all up to a terribly misjudged call. No harm. No foul. Sebastian's left the decision in his hands.

But while he has the steadiest hands of anyone he's met they tremble at this; he rattles with indecision, with doubt, with a desire he decidedly shouldn't have. If so ordered he would shoot Sebastian and not blink, but when faced with this decision — he might as well be putty in Sebastian's hands.

He hates Sebastian. But he wants him all the same.

As he gets up and stalks toward the backroom he's struck with the thought of Sebastian as a fox, lying in wait to ensnare him, sly and cunning as the hunter who waits for its prey. It should snap him out of his lustful fog. It should make him want to start a war. But it doesn't.

He inserts the key into the door, exhaling as he turns the lock. There's no going back. Sebastian knows that too.

Cigarette smoke fills the room, Sebastian appearing like a specter. "You took your time."

He locks the door. Backs into it.

No exit.

"I shouldn't be here."

Sebastian casts a lazy smile and stubs out his cigarette, closing the distance between them with as much care as he does intent; he moves with the grace and majesty of a fox, a deliberate precision in his movements that he finds difficult to resist.

Sebastian cocks an eyebrow. "But you are."

The fox always does prefer sly cunning to brute force.

"This–" He swallows hard, eyes skipping to Sebastian's lips — No names. Just bodies. "–can't be more than what it is."

Sebastian ventures another step closer, a finger teasing at the button of his pants, right along the zipper — he loses all sense of what's up and what's down, in and out, right or wrong. Strength or weakness. He can taste Sebastian in the air, the minty after-burn of his cigarette, something sweet and rosy on his skin.

"And what's that?" Sebastian asks softly, his voice setting dark and heavy on his diaphragm, the tears that burn in the corners of his eyes not so much informed by sadness or sorrow as they are by the most authentic kind of distress. They're enemies on opposite sides of the Corridor. They're not friends, not even—

"Just this," he whispers, blinking away tears that betray his true wishes, that could destroy him, but Sebastian doesn't give them the chance to; his lips close over his, a hand ghosts over his crotch, and his gut twists with a razor-sharp itch.

Grabbing around Sebastian's neck his tongue snags behind his teeth. For a few maddening moments Sebastian leaves his pants alone and holds his face, angling it so he can suck at his tongue, their mouths a filthy mess of ragged breaths and saliva, would-be bruises and all the fight still left in them. They shouldn't. But they do. Sebastian's hips skip uncoordinated along his in search of more friction, their bodies close. So close.

He reaches down and undoes Sebastian's pants, pushing the fabric down impossibly slim hips, Sebastian in his hand a few moments later. Sebastian moans to his lips and makes quick work to do the same to him, as if he can't get off fast enough, as if the world could end tomorrow, they'll be discovered and they'll be forced to account for their sins.

As if there's a gun to his head too.

The thought gives him pause, and he makes the unmentionable mistake of finding Sebastian's eyes, because the taller hesitates too, halting any friction between their bodies. But where his heart wraps around the fear that they're starting something they'll never be able to come back from, while he almost turns tail and runs before he gets in too deep, Sebastian's eyes relay a clear challenge, highlighted by a flick of his thumb, a near imperceptible squeeze of his hand. For the time being he allows it; with a smirk he leaves Sebastian high and dry and settles back against the door, hiking up his shirt to watch himself get played with, one hand braced flat behind him.

Sebastian's shoulders roll with beautifully contained frustration, quickly replaced with that all-encompassing slick smile that traps a snarl behind his teeth. "Always figured one of you Andersons had to have a kinky side."

Sebastian's body sways into his, his hand a delicate stroke, his breath tickling along his ear.

"Underneath all that tight control," Sebastian whispers, while he gasps a shuddery breath, both at the unrelenting ease of Sebastian's hand and the sight of his limp dick. "Underneath all this black. Those gloves. Those trench coats."

He wears black for a good reason, though one not currently preoccupying his conscious mind, not with Sebastian driving him insane, his words and ministrations spun right alongside his dark dissatisfied need.

"I bet you don't even touch yourself," –another challenge– "do you, Anderson?"

"You talk too much," he breathes, and suddenly his hands are at Sebastian's chest, suddenly they're propelled toward the bed, suddenly he's on top of Sebastian and they're both rushing to get clothing out of the way, pants down, shirts hiked up until their hips slot together, and a slow grind starts them breathing again.

He steals the words right out of Sebastian's mouth with his lips, even though there's nothing he'd rather do than have that sharp tongue hollow him out, soften hard edges, but impatience rubs and bumps them together in an ungraceful manner. He tugs at the sheets below them, bears his hips down to chase the aching throb, but fails to alleviate any of the pressure. So he grabs down around them both, his fingers a tight ring slicked with precome, the enemies now lovers against their better judgment.

He licks a wet line up Sebastian's throat, a restrained bob underneath his tongue once he bites behind his ear — hands fly down and grab around his ass; his hips, Sebastian's hips, a rhythm so tight sin itself weaves into their skin.

Afterwards, they lie side by side on the bed. Partly clothed. Both of them coated all over Sebastian's stomach, his right hand, select sections of the sheets. They pass a cigarette between them, smoke knitting into their clothes and the room at large. His shame lies matted on the floor, from his spot in the bar tracking to this room, drying thick in the small hairs on the back of his hand. He could track it by its taste and scent, copper and citrusy with a bitter aftertaste. Yet something he could swallow.

"Is it true? What they say about you?" Sebastian asks as he daintily plucks the cigarette from between his lips. Another cheap one. Not one of his father's imports.

He wipes his hand along the sheets, zips up his pants.

There are plenty of rumors about him — how he's the worst among men, how he'd kill hundreds, entire families should his father ask, how he's killed men with his bare hands. How he wears black to slip by unnoticed in the shadows, to hide exactly how cozily death sits hunched on his shoulders. Some modicum of a lie. Some modicum of truth. Who can say.

"That you can't see the color red?"

His shoulders lift off the bed.

One exit.

He closes his eyes as he sits up. Rearranges the sheets around him. Exhales. He's armed. Sebastian isn't. Right now it seems more of a calculated risk than a mistake.

"I can't," he confesses, even though it shouldn't leak out of him so easily. It's not a rumor, not one in a long line of others covering the stretch between lies and truth; it's what he thought to be a carefully guarded secret. But the Smythes, much like other players in this elaborately dangerous chess game of theirs, have ways of uncovering hidden truths. What does it matter? He can't distinguish red from black. Hardly the end of the world.

"So you're–"

"Color blind," he preempts. "Dichromatic. In the red-green spectrum."

Most would say it makes him a great killer. Men have. His brother had.

Now, the air merely trembles with a smile.

This time, he leaves first.

.

He didn't start out this way.

As the second son of Landon Anderson he would be groomed for an important position within his father's empire, but no one knew exactly which one. Most of his parents' attention went to his brother; Cooper attended business school, received self defense and gun training from the best in the trade, got personal introductions to several key members within the organization — the full premium package every first born son got.

He got all of Cooper's hand-me-downs.

For the first ten years of their lives he and Rachel lived with their grandparents on their mom's side, out in the country where the city was nothing but a blip on the radar, a memory that never took hold. The house stood alone in endless wide-open fields, grass and corn and wheat as far as the eye could reach along the horizon. A double swing set in the backyard, the dogs running around freely, a barn for the horses.

There wasn't a day that went by he and Rachel weren't running around in the fields playing tag, hide-and-seek in the rows of corn, taking turns sitting on their grandpa's lap to drive the tractor around. His parents and Cooper visited every weekend because no matter what anyone would claim he and Rachel were never neglected. Cooper needed to develop independently of his siblings while he and Rachel needed to be safe from his father's enemies; his parents wanted them to have a normal childhood. And he did. His grandparents' house was the safest place he'd ever known.

Until the night that ended too.

The gunmen came in the dark of night. Maybe they'd followed his parents there one weekend, maybe someone betrayed them, but his childhood would end that early morning.

He woke up at 2am to the deafening sound of a gunshot. His ears rang as he reached for Rachel underneath the sheets, asleep by his side every night.

The floorboards outside the door creaked and he foolishly called out, "Grandma?" which served to bring the footsteps closer. He grabbed Rachel's arm and forced her under the bed as the door handle shook, calculating they'd never make it to the window, they'd never get it open in time, they'd never slip away unseen.

He'd been ten years old. But he already knew his place in the world as described by his brother and father.

The door opened to two black boots and he covered Rachel's mouth to keep her from screaming, but a second shot rang out, his ears popping along with his heart, a blind panic seizing his entire body. The strange man slumped down on the floor, his head hitting the floorboards in a sickening thump that would haunt his dreams for years to come.

"Blaine! Rachel!"

His grandfather's voice.

He and Rachel scrambled out from under the bed, racing toward the safety their grandfather offered, ecstatic to see the shotgun he armed himself with. Rachel tiptoed around the blood, making sure none of it touched her toes, while he trailed bloody footprints around the house.

 _Red._

 _So red._

"Where's grandma?" Rachel had whispered, clutching at his arm, but he had no idea; he didn't understand what was happening, why people would want to harm them, his eyes seeing _red, nothing but red._

No. He did know why. They wanted to hurt his dad.

His grandpa led them downstairs, through the kitchen, straight to the backdoor. "Run for the cornfield as fast as you can."

Then, his grandfather did what he never did, what he only allowed when they shot beer cans out in the fields, what grandma wouldn't have approved of if– if– if they weren't currently being hunted like prey.

His grandfather pushed a revolver into his hand. The six-shooter he'd been taught to shoot.

"Hide," he said, "You hear me, son? Keep your sister safe. Don't look back. Shoot anything that comes at you."

He'd nodded; it seemed like the only thing to do, the gun a burden his hands hadn't yet learned.

Rachel started crying.

"Grandpa–" fear stuttered in his throat, but footsteps in the other room chased all selfless thought; everything he'd been taught kicked in and he took Rachel's hand, pushed through the back door and ran, they ran as fast as their feet would carry them, the grass and weeds cutting into their skin, and Rachel cried, she cried so hard as they ducked into the cornfield.

He knew the field like the back of his hand but the dark distorted his sense of direction — they were running from the house, but where to? How far? How deep did they have to push before they were safe?

Two more gunshots stopped them dead in their tracks.

Rachel choked back a scream.

He raised the gun to where the noise came from, ready to slay the dark itself.

Then, the rustle started in the field. The wind traipsed through the stalks, but this was different, heavier, like– like someone big digging their way through the field in search of them. He swallowed hard, added pressure to the trigger, which made his hand shake, the weight of the revolver too much. But the rustling wouldn't stop and he needed to be strong, needed to protect Rachel, needed to be the man his father told him to be.

He let go of Rachel's hand, her arms circling his waist, both his hands coming together around the gun. All he heard was his own ragged breathing, his heart hammering in his chest, a monster about to find them.

A body pushed between two corn stalks.

He shut his eyes and squeezed the trigger.

Birds shot up in the field. Rachel screamed. A body dropped dead at his feet.

And the color red ceased to exist.

Two days later police officers pulled him and Rachel out of the cornfield, dehydrated but their bellies full of corn. His grandparents both shot dead. Two gunmen dead in the house. One in the field. He couldn't distinguish the blood on his feet, nor the red on Rachel's nightshirt, couldn't see the red of the ambulance as anything but a soft shade of greyish green.

He moved home with his parents and Cooper, let Rachel crawl into bed with him for another year.

His father paid for the best shrinks in the city to fix him, but he never saw red again. The violence tainted him black and blue on the inside, a dull grey on the outside, a deep crimson red where his heart bled out in his chest. Inside. Where no one could reach. He learned more about the world he was meant to grow up in that one night than he would the rest of his life.

In the years that followed he picked up on the numbers and the people to pay off, the players in the dangerous game they played, mastered hand-to-hand combat but applied himself to firearms the most, trained in the masterful art of deducing a man's strengths and weaknesses.

He would never be that same carefree boy running in the fields again.

So he became what he feared the most instead.

.

.

 **tbc**

.

*the theme of Blaine's specific/traumatic color blindness is taken from a little movie called _Color of Night_.


	2. Part 2

.

.

 **But Loving Him Is Red**

part two

.

The next time it happens, it doesn't start with a kiss, not even with the slightest hint of a touch.

He sits idle at his regular table at Azure, drinks two whiskey sours before that room key invitation –number 7– gets sent his way. He enters the room first, Sebastian following a few minutes later, and while he has trouble breathing, while the single exit starts sputtering around the edges to be noticed, he fights his impulse to run; if only to catch the lack of that same instinct in Sebastian's eyes.

It's confirmation. It's affirmation. Most of all, it's permission.

Green eyes read the heavy rise and fall of his chest, the set of his shoulders, and must find something amusing there, because a smile curls mischief into Sebastian's features.

He doesn't move.

Neither of them does.

But there's no mistake. They're both here for the same thing.

A cold sweat trips up the back of his neck, a hint of nausea. An animal aware it's trapped.

Sebastian tosses his pack of cigarettes on the bed, eyes a playful request for something in return. His move.

Uncertain of the game they're playing –who caves first, who surrenders– he pockets his watch.

Sebastian huffs a laugh, the predator pleased to have found a playmate, and shrugs out of his jacket. Cocks an eyebrow.

 _Oh_.

His jaw clenches as patience gestates below his skin, making his feet lighter. In a way they're consigned to this, to the secrecy and immorality of the act. The repetition they risk. The deadly game they've started. But that doesn't make him comfortable. They're only ever bodies in this small tucked-away room, their names don't matter, but Sebastian gives him far too much space to think.

To backtrack.

To doubt.

"Come on, Anderson."

One of Sebastian's hands slides into a pocket of his jeans, palming at his groin, unknotting a detail he'd almost forgotten: there's a pay-off. He's not here for Sebastian; not his name, but his body.

"Rude to keep a guy waiting."

He licks his lips. Pulls his black Henley over his head and discards it on the floor.

"Good boy."

Anger hooks beneath his skin, even more so when Sebastian's eyes take note of the clench of his fists and that same sly smile nears cocky; he's not someone's pet, not a marionette Sebastian can make dance to his tune. Yet the tug at his sternum, of the inescapable, of Sebastian between him and his only exit — that's his greatest weakness.

And when Sebastian's shirt comes off in a lithe movement, revealing freckles littered over his skin he hadn't noticed before, defined and carved abs he never could've guessed hid beneath his clothing, all his conscious mind can reach around are Sebastian's hips. He wants those slotted between his thighs again.

In a moment of weakness his eyes trace over the delicate rise of collarbone along Sebastian's shoulder, five dots tattooed there.

Four arranged in a square. One in the dead center.

"Juvie," Sebastian says, but doesn't go into detail, or explain the other tattoo over his ribs, the line of scar tissue below his ribcage.

He doesn't need an explanation. Doesn't want one. He knows Sebastian spent a year in juvie for assault charges — he can't imagine what that must've been like for someone of his standing. Either really easy, or hell on earth. There'd be no in between for people like them.

He unbuckles his belt, undoes his trousers, discarding the small gun holster at his ankle. Soon he's stripped down to his boxers. Naked. Exposed. About to be ensnared.

Sebastian pulls his belt free. Drops it to the floor.

His throat runs dry.

"Never said I'd play fair." Sebastian winks, hands at his hips. "Your turn."

He should run, he should get out of there before Sebastian's games spin him into the pitiful creature he'd become both other times. Before he starts liking what they're doing. But the thought of running doesn't scare him near as much as not getting what he came here for; Sebastian's hips, his mouth, his body. He wants all of that.

Without another thought he strips out of his boxers, stomping them out with his feet, and he shivers, he writhes beneath Sebastian's hot gaze tracing down his chest, scrutinizing every inch of him while wetting his lips, the curious tilt of his head more animal-like than human.

"The things I want to do to you, Anderson."

Hairs at the back of his neck stand on end.

The things he would let Sebastian do to him.

His hands fail to settle anywhere in particular so he keeps them at his sides, clenching and unclenching, unable to ignore the interested twitch below his waist when Sebastian loses his pants. No underwear.

He envies Sebastian his calm, his exuberant ease with being stark naked, telling of a life lived in the light; he doesn't hide like a creature afraid of the sun, but he's far more comfortable in the shadows, wrapped in layers and secrets so people might never divine what makes him tick. Being naked like this in front of Sebastian, a man meant to be his enemy — no, a man _who is_ his enemy, might be the most arduous demand anyone has ever made.

"How many times have you done this?" he dares ask, swallowing around the misconception that it would matter , that it would change his mind, that it would in any way make a shred of difference. He's here body and soul, and he couldn't run if he tried. Sebastian could've slept with a hundred different men and it would make this easier. He'd be another notch in his belt. Nothing more.

Sebastian chances a step closer. "This?"

"Me."

He closes his eyes.

"Guys like me."

"I think it's safe to say there's never been a guy like you," Sebastian says, followed by a warm hand touching his cheek — it chases any apprehension he'd held onto out of the room, on the heels of his dignity, his pride.

Not his shame.

That's alive hissing at him in the recesses of his mind.

His eyes open to slivers of green, a smug smile, a thumb rubbing circles into his jaw. "Does that scare you?"

One of Sebastian's fingers curls under his chin, the fox casting its come-hither spell , and he shudders at the mass it leaves on his chest; he's scared to death of how much he wants this, how the conditions of his surrender include Sebastian's equal willingness to be here with him, to self-annihilate, to destroy one another.

He's terrified he might actually need this.

.

When Sebastian's not with him he's a runner for his father.

In the olden days of numbers games a runner collected policy slips and cash and crossed the distance between the betting parlors and headquarters — Sebastian still collected bets, ran money between the casino and several of his father's clubs, and made sure people made good on their money.

From what he gathered Sebastian rarely got his hands dirty, had a way of outsourcing that to people like Hunter Clarington, or people he could pay off, and he definitely had a charm about him that demanded respect. A charm that enchanted, tore down walls, made people put their trust in him.

Sebastian would make a great businessman. Just like his father.

.

"You didn't wash your hair," Sebastian says the moment he exits the small bathroom — as if he hadn't ordered him to shower thoroughly fifteen minutes ago.

Sebastian stripped out of his jacket, the top buttons of his shirt undone, while his thumbs and index fingers rub together at his sides; he edges to the balls of his feet every few seconds.

Maybe he had taken his time, scrubbed at his neck, his stomach, his ass; all the places Sebastian might venture. Maybe he didn't want to leave Sebastian with the impression he could be bossed around, even though he gave in with little to no resistance. The small victory shouldn't give him the satisfaction it does either, since he's here all the same, and his body burns with all the things Sebastian could have planned. All the things Sebastian could do to him.

He rolls his shoulders back. "Should I have?" he asks, his shirt too big with the sleeves unbuttoned, a pinch of cold against his warmed skin where his shirt hangs upon — he put his boxers on again too, and no, he hadn't washed the gel out of his hair, hadn't so much as let the water touch it. Perhaps it would have been a concession too many.

"No." Sebastian closes the distance between them with a few languid strides, his shoulders set wide like he lacks the space to breathe properly, and for a moment or two he's convinced Sebastian will simply take what he wants, have him like he's had him before, outline his territory with teeth, fingers that bruise, crush into his chest and curl up there like a misshapen heart.

But Sebastian stops short of his claim, a gasp at the back of his throat when Sebastian's lips –his mouth, his tongue– resist the urge to dirty his a bloody red. A thumb catches at his bottom lip, sweeps across it, blurring the lead pencil lines between Sebastian's desire and his own, eyes intent on the action.

Heat draws down his body, along the edges Sebastian plays with, the distance they shorten every time they meet. Sebastian teases closer, his breath staining his lips and draws back shy of a kiss, over and over, carbon copying his frustration onto him.

His fingers knit into Sebastian's waist, right where the desperation lives, Sebastian's body wound so tight the wrong touch might make him snap — he can't stop to wonder what might be wrong, what may have caused this irritation, because that's touching too close to a pressure point he wouldn't want exploited either.

He digs his nails deeper while teeth snap at Sebastian's lips, earning him a self-satisfied grin he means to tear to pieces.

"Up against the wall," Sebastian growls before he gets the chance to, but he winds long fingers around his throat and guides him there, their lips coming together as his skull connects with the wall — nerve endings crack with the most minute kind of pain, and he moans into Sebastian's mouth as his hands are forced over his head.

Sebastian pushes the length of his body against his, and when he tries to lower his arms Sebastian slams them back, leaving bruises along his wrists. So he keeps them there, even as Sebastian's fingers scale down his arms, the lips tearing down his throat threatening to rip it out, lips and hands too everywhere for any coherent thought to come — lips at his nipples, teeth corroding his skin, a hand not too gently shoved inside his boxers and a rhythm, a pace, that would drive any man out of his mind.

He doesn't touch Sebastian. He has no need to. Not with Sebastian in control, Sebastian making the decisions. His desire in the hands of an enemy.

"Turn around," Sebastian commands, falling to his knees, and he gives way without any protest, even though he longs to feel Sebastian's mouth around him, hips bucking into tight heat chasing his release.

Gently, almost caring, Sebastian lowers his boxers down his hips, bites at his ass, and he braces against the wall with both hands, hot breath knitting into the wallpaper; Sebastian squeezes his ass and pushes kisses along his cheeks, drawing lines from his hips down to his thighs to get him to relax.

No one has ever done this to him, but he's thought about it, thought about someone's mouth on him, inside him, slowly opening him up. It'd been nothing but a shameful fantasy, because what man would relinquish control like that? What kind of man would drop his guard? A weak man, or a strong one?

Sebastian spits and circles a finger around his hole, and it's all he can do to keep from crying out. He punches the wall, his skin crawling from the exposure; vulnerable, shaking, an animal lured away from the rest of the herd about to be picked off by the apex predator. It's shameful how he needs this, the gentle caress of Sebastian's finger, fantasy come to life.

No control. No more exits. No time to run.

Sebastian licks over his hole, leaving him boneless, spineless, too weak underneath the weight of the entire world bearing down on him.

He's a body, not an Anderson, in this room.

His knees nearly give out, Sebastian's tongue hot and greedy, one of his hands coming around to jerk him off; he pushes back against Sebastian's mouth, reaches around and scratches at Sebastian's scalp, so hard it draws blood.

Red underneath his fingernails.

The inescapable snuggling near the base of his spine.

.

An hour before bed, Rachel's taken to practicing the violin.

It quiets his parents, soothes his mother's tears, and lulled him into a false sense of security that allows him to sleep for at least a few hours. His time with Sebastian leaves him exhausted, his skin split down to the bone, corrosive and aching. He's primed for action every moment he's with Sebastian, and even though Sebastian's body offers release, offers the eye rather than the storm itself, the trigger rather than the bullet, at some point something will have to give.

His body.

His spirit.

Maybe even his life.

.

Condensation traipses up the light curve of the car windows, their labored breathing fogging up the glass. They can't crack any of the windows or the doors, else they might be discovered, and they've taken such care despite the danger they invoke. They're parked behind a club Sebastian's uncle owns in an unmarked car with stolen plates, the doors locked, keys in the ignition. Just in case they need to make a quick run for it, race out of town so neither of their families can exact the death penalty they're bound to be charged with.

It's overly cautious. But in their world anything could happen.

The Corridor has become their playground, two miles of boardwalk lined with clubs and bars and storefronts, neutral places where their names aren't Anderson or Smythe, not Blaine, not Sebastian. They're bodies instead, flesh and blood.

Ash, and dust.

It's how he justifies it, in any case.

Sebastian works his hand up and down, while he does the same to Sebastian, their lips caught together as they sit side by side, Sebastian behind the wheel, he in the passenger seat. The position fails to do much for either of them, but they hadn't dared risk the backseat while the club was packed, so they've set this maddening pace instead.

As if to test who will break the rules of this game first.

Ten minutes ago he would've sworn it wouldn't be him, but then Sebastian's hand started on him warm and slow, working lewdly up and down his length, pausing for a few moments, squeezing around the tip, and surely coiled him into a mess that ached and throbbed and hurt.

He hates that Sebastian has this power, but not nearly as much as he fears breaking ties altogether.

And while Sebastian had begged, "Grab it tighter," no six seconds ago his resolve wavers in pursuit of his release, the escape of his sin at the thought of coming all over Sebastian's hand and feeling Sebastian drip all over his, and he can't take it anymore — he grabs around Sebastian's wrist and pulls it free from him, twisting in his seat so he can fall forward into Sebastian's lap.

Maybe he gives up control. Maybe he takes it.

He can't see beyond the thick blurred lines inextricable and tangled between them anymore.

Sebastian gasps as he puts his mouth on him, his head lolling back against the headrest. "Anderson," he sighs, and bucks up into the heat of his mouth, winding fingers into his hair, unleashing his carefully groomed curls as he's done so often. He closes his eyes and sucks, tries to ignore how his own body screams to be touched.

"Just like that," Sebastian breathes, followed by a groan and hum and the sound of one of his feet tapping out a tuneless rhythm; he must be as far gone as he is, ready to spill into his mouth any moment, ready to give himself over to this release yet again. Their shared need for shame.

Not before Sebastian draws a hand down his back, inching his fingers well past the waistband of his boxers and kneads at his ass, circles a finger around his hole — he damn near crawls out of his skin, lips tightening around Sebastian and as the pad of Sebastian's finger settles below his balls he loses any control he might've had, feels all control seep from Sebastian's body at the same time, hot on his tongue, thick citrus and copper bitter down his throat.

He swallows and thrashes and as his forehead lands on Sebastian's thigh, as he lies catching his breath in the stifling confines of the space their world allows, he swears he sees it again.

 _Red_.

In the corners of his eyes.

Sebastian forces his long fingers into his hair, as if another _Good boy, well done_ , another lie he spins so he doesn't take it as a _thank you_ or anything more loving he wouldn't know how to decipher. He lingers for exactly three seconds, before he decides he's not a pet curled in Sebastian's lap, and sits up.

Unlike many other of their elicit meet-ups, so carefully conducted in the shadows, reality comes crashing back surprisingly fast; music from the club filters into the car as Sebastian cracks a window, the cool night air catching at the sweat on his skin.

The car had been a bad idea.

They both clean up as best as they can, tug themselves back into their pants, and zip up.

Sebastian starts the car. He can't think why. It's not like they can go somewhere and share a drink. That isn't something they'll ever be able to share. No nightcaps without locking the doors. No public appearances lest their fathers catch on.

It's late now.

He should head home.

"Hey," Sebastian calls. It starts a pressure behind his eyes.

He knows Sebastian means to beg a kiss, bookend their night together, but he can't bring himself to face him. His shame blurs his vision in the form of tears.

Sebastian's fingers brush his cheek. "Why are you here if you don't want to be?"

"Why are you?"

It's not a denial, but it's not exactly an avowal either. Truth is he's been where he wanted to be since that night Sebastian failed to take his revenge, and it's an insult for Sebastian to believe him an unassuming agent in this aspect of his life. Some of his agency lies in the alluring lines of Sebastian's body, no doubt, but it's the way his body crashes into Sebastian's that keeps him coming back.

An affair isn't an affair without two willing participants.

His shame stems from his quick lies, from the ease with which Sebastian slithered into his life and made him want to want this.

Sebastian's laid bare a part of him that had never seen the light of day, and if he's not careful he'll die from exposure. His bullets will ricochet and take them both out.

"What makes you think I'm not exactly where I want to be?"

This time he can't control it. He looks at Sebastian sideways, the fingers on his cheek brushing over his lips, and he turns blind, deaf and mute, because things like this should never be spoken.

What they're doing is forbidden.

"Does that scare you?" Sebastian asks, fingers playing over his mouth.

It scares him senseless.

But even if he'd somehow found the strength to answer it wouldn't have mattered; Sebastian's gaze falters and his fingers fall away — he stares out into oblivion, hands at the wheel, feet at the pedals. It's surprising to find Sebastian capable of making mistakes too.

He steps out of the car.

Shuts the door behind him.

Watches Sebastian speed away.

And he can't help but shudder. Sebastian's committed to this completely, his shame and want are equals and each of their trespasses encourages him, emboldens his actions. How long can they keep that up before there's no going back?

Where is their point of no return?

.

"You're late," his father calls, but doesn't spare him a second glance as he makes his way over. The basement of the new high-rise development smells of cement and glue, warm and thick like the spaces he claims with Sebastian.

He rights his tie and rolls his shoulders, Sebastian's fresh teeth marks raw against the fabric of his shirt. At least no blood will show through the black.

His father won't expect an apology; now that he's here he's expected to follow orders, put the family business first, think, though not entirely independently. That's how it works.

There's a man bound and gagged at their feet whose face he doesn't recognize, but then he rarely knows the strangers his father dumps at his feet, never bothers learning the names of the souls he ferries.

Cooper once asked if that made it easier.

He hadn't answered.

But it didn't.

"What do you want me to do with him?" he asks, and watches the man grab at his father's shoes, sniveling and whimpering, as if it might delay his execution. _Fool_.

His father takes a prompt step back.

"Mr. Roderick here took it upon himself to inform Sue Silvestri of some of my new business ventures."

Small bloody footprints paint themselves over memories of that night in the field. Even after all these years, the name stands his hairs on end; Sue Silvestri, the matriarch who escaped his father's wrath.

"Take care of it," comes his father's order.

There'd been a time, one he can barely remember, where the orders came more clearly, were delineated by the proper noun for the act, for _murder_ , for _execution_ , for the lead of his bullets. Now he needs but a few referential cues.

Death, then, he thinks, for the rat in their midst.

Landon Anderson leaves, and Blaine waits for his father's footsteps to die out before he unearths the 9mm from the small of his back.

The man on the floor turns on his stomach and pulls himself forward on his elbows, trying to escape his reach, both his legs helpless sacks adding too much weight; someone must've taken a bat to them before bringing him here. There was really no point in running; there's no one around to register his screams, nowhere to run to, and no one who will hear the gunshot.

He follows behind the man, the next notch on his belt, if he can call it that, and pushes a foot between his shoulder blades once he catches up.

The man screams.

He breathes in deep.

Pulls the trigger.

His peripheral vision blurs to green, then grey, then a stark black he's intimately familiar with, all over again.

.

Sebastian sinks his teeth deep into his shoulder as he inches inside him one shallow thrust at a time, opening older marks that never even got the chance to heal. He's grown used to the scars Sebastian leaves, much easier to carry than the ones etched on the inside of his skin, living tattoos crawling, sniveling and whimpering. Names he never bothered to learn. Compares to those he carries Sebastian on his skin with a disgusting modicum of pride, a dirty secret his alone.

He's never had anything his alone that didn't ache like a festering wound.

Having a Smythe there, one he tries his best to reduce into a nameless faceless stranger, shouldn't give him any satisfaction; Smythes are the enemy, the West to the Anderson East, yet he cowers at the thought of having no enemy at all. Who would he be, without that gun in his hand?

Better to hate Sebastian and take his fill than linger on thoughts that have never been relevant. That gun will always be in his hand, growing ever lighter — at least when he's with Sebastian he doesn't have to think about it.

Their trespasses were going to lead to this no matter what, his final bare-naked surrender, his body played with and opened up and sunk down over Sebastian's dick. He hadn't had the strength to face him, so he'd turned his back and opened his legs like a prostitute, leaned back on both arms for support, letting Sebastian thrust up into him.

It's a surrender of its own right in its lewdness, but he wouldn't know what to do with himself should he meet with the green slivers in Sebastian's eyes, an emerald temptation inviting him ever closer, down the rabbit hole where there's a language he can't speak. He won't.

A language Sebastian spoke to Adam.

No. Better to be owned and taken and cut open to the bone, where there are compound fractures the shape of his shame and pride. All indistinguishable now.

Hands on his ass Sebastian drives up into him at a torturous pace, and their combined gasps and moans do little to stifle his need for more, for something harder that'll erase his train of thought, that'll weaken his ties to the world as he knows it.

Sebastian's an escape, if anything.

Then, in one fail swoop, Sebastian sits up and stills their movements, while one of his hands caresses down the length of his spine in an almost loving gesture.

He shivers.

"Beg me for it," Sebastian says, breathing heavily.

He blinks a few times, eyes opening to a stifling dark.

Beg him? His enemy?

In his mind's eye he struggles free, leaves Sebastian high and dry, but in reality the words near pour out of him, _Please, Sebastian_ , and it's that very fact that traps them behind his teeth. He won't do this, yield this power to Sebastian like he's yielded most everything else, he won't be another puppet in another game, even if it's one he helped start.

It's been three months of this sweet agony and it'd be a lie if he said he wished it to end, but this—

He won't become less than who he is.

"Beg. Me. For. It," Sebastian enunciates, each word underscored by a swift angle in his hips, while his chest settles against his back, his hands everywhere, his languid body gravity and oxygen all at once. The trouble is Sebastian charts the outlines of his desires all too well, chips at his resolve with fingertips growing ever more careful, ever less whimsical, carving out new pathways of their own.

But no, this command borders humiliation, this nears hunkering down onto his knees and praying. He won't beg. He'll leave before he begs.

"Come on, Anderson." Sebastian grabs around his throat, forces their bodies closer together and continues his other hand downward, where he folds fingers around him and gently jerks him off. He bears his hips down and rolls them, all in pursuit of more friction, but Sebastian barely budges.

"Let me hear you say it," Sebastian whispers, teeth snapping at his ear. "We both know you want it."

He does want it; he wants it so shamefully bad he can't even bring himself to admit it, for the amalgam of quicksilver in Sebastian's veins to flow through his own, for his toxicity levels to rise until his blood vessels silt and turn liquid, filling with the ecstasy of sensory deprivation.

He grabs back and rips at Sebastian's hair, drawing bloody lines his hands have learned too easily. Sebastian's hips snap up sharply, and they cry out in unison, their stillness having set underneath their skins.

"God damn it, Anderson, you're eager," Sebastian hisses, and musses a hand through his curls for good measure, loose and sweaty against his skull. "Do you want it?" He pants. "Tell me how badly you want it."

A whine escapes the back of his throat, and he pushes back into Sebastian's body, but all Sebastian does is lie back against the sheets, kneads at his ass as if he'd be content to remain like this, stare up at him naked and exposed. Gloat over his total and fatal control over him.

He gives into it.

The weight on his shoulders and his heedless desire has him turning his head, and he twists his body around like a contortionist's, all in pursuit of what only Sebastian can give. His lips part. His hips roll. His arms start shaking.

For a moment or two, he watches Sebastian hesitate — his eyes skip from his eyes to his lips, and a tentative hand strokes at his hip, before Sebastian meets him halfway. Their tongues meet, and they lick at each other open mouthed, their breathing growing heavier, but any weightier demands dissipating.

He can't think of it as a power he holds over Sebastian in turn, like somehow an attachment has grown between them that gives him influence over his actions, because frankly, that's too terrifying a thought to have. He holds no care for Sebastian but over his body, and it's the same for Sebastian.

At least he hopes so.

He lies back draped over Sebastian's body at an odd angle, a hand closing around his throat and Sebastian reduced to groans, and sighs, and small sputtering breaths as hips pick up their previous pace.

"God, you're a sight, Anderson," Sebastian breathes and bites at his jaw, sucking another mark into his skin.

What a sight they must be, indeed.

Afterwards, he lies back on the sheets, stares up at the ceiling, lulled into a restless calm by the sound of the shower running. Sebastian never takes long, never seems to have quite as much sin to scrub at. Or maybe he wears it with pride.

So little about Sebastian ever makes sense.

By the time Sebastian makes it out of the bathroom, snags his pants off the floor and buttons up his shirt again, he's sitting up, staring at the door.

Wondering when it ceased to be a plausible exit.

When he stopped needing it to be one.

"You want to know why I'm here, Anderson?"

His lips pucker around the butt of the cigarette Sebastian lit for him, the question one he'd pondered weeks ago. He smiles when he recognizes the frustrated sigh Sebastian expels at his unresponsiveness, but he manages to wipe it clean. A power they don't share.

Sebastian reaches down and grabs around his chin, forcing him to meet his eye.

"You're the only one who understands."

It's not hard to translate Sebastian's words, but he averts his eyes nonetheless. They're both caged animals expected to serve, expected to follow orders. Expected not to sleep with their enemies.

What little left of those rules is what keeps them enemies, keeps them strangers to a certain extent. There's still a line between them, and though blurred, he won't cross that. Maybe of all the boys in all the world it had to be Sebastian to rip him to pieces. But pieces they'll remain.

"You think you're like all the others?"

"Others?" he dares ask.

"The other boys I invited into my bed?"

He shudders at the use of the past tense — Sebastian his alone, and he Sebastian's.

Months ago he told Sebastian this couldn't be more than what it was, and he still won't be considered different than any other of Sebastian's conquests. But how can he not be, his name being what it is? How can he deny that name, especially around a Smythe, simply because they decided to make it so?

How has this whole thing not been a lie from the beginning?

They started the most dangerous game. They signed their own death sentences.

He swallows hard, but whatever it is goes down like acid.

Sebastian chuckles, a disrespectful sound. "You want to be, don't you?"

This time, he does beg.

"Why can't you let me be?"

This would be so much easier.

Sebastian leans in. He closes his eyes and lets himself be kissed, seduced once more by the fox casting its spell, grown stronger yet. In so many ways Sebastian draws strength from his weakness, a trade implicit in their interactions. Sebastian takes and he gives, or maybe it's the other way around; he's never bothered tracking the boundaries of his own weakness.

Even though he should.

"I'm not the one who chose this."

Sebastian stands and shrugs into his jacket, grabbing his nr°7 key before unlocking the door. Disappears through it.

And he agrees.

He didn't choose this either.

Over two decades ago, they were both born into this.

.

There's a gun to his head.

There's a gun to Sebastian's head.

Time will catch up eventually but they run anyway, a futile attempt at evading fate.

.

His days pale in comparison to his nights with Sebastian; not every night, but a few times every week they meet up at the club, or wherever one of them might be along the Corridor at any given time. They each buy an untraceable burner phone –Sebastian's idea– so they know when and where to meet, and if anyone ever asked, having a burner phone on him wasn't an oddity.

Adam hasn't noticed, or if he has he chooses not to say anything, and he does question why Sebastian can suffer this with him and not Adam. Was it that Sebastian still loved Adam and couldn't stand the thought of dragging him into their world? Or did Sebastian like the danger of his body, the idea that they were both trapped and they shared this secret? If it ever got out, they were both doomed, no matter what happened.

Mutually assured destruction.

Madness.

It's an addiction more than anything. He doesn't need the bullets and guns nearly as much as he needs Sebastian's body. Not nearly as much as the disrespect they show two empires erected by mortal sins.

He stops saying 'no' altogether, gives into Sebastian every time he calls, and makes his own fair share of requests. They screw behind a local convenience store, his legs around Sebastian's waist as the taller thrusts into him, leaves a bite mark over his collarbone that won't heal for days. Sebastian meets him at an abandoned warehouse where they blow each other between empty crates of fish and shrimp, the scent so strong he needs to change at home and throw away his clothes before having dinner with his parents. He straddles Sebastian's lap and rides him in some back office of a nightclub Sebastian took his fiancée, smuggling him in through a back door.

And it always ends, like it usually does, with the crippling shame of knowing he surrendered again, that he proved weak in the face of his darkest desires, all those Sebastian fulfilled, and all those he had yet to.

Hot water and soap dissolved the muck of murder, of blood, of his own weakness, but no matter how hard he scrubs after he shares a bed with Sebastian, some of the taint remains. Some of Sebastian remains. Bruises on his thighs. Bite marks over his ribs. His ass sore where Sebastian got rough.

The way he liked it.

What he keeps coming back for.

Sometimes at night he can still smell Sebastian on his skin, the ghost of a hand down his back, lips at his neck, a body heavy over his, and he wishes he did sleep.

If only for the momentary reprieve.

Every time they smash together it becomes worse. They risk so much for each other's bodies alone and it should be laughable if they didn't tempt their own self-destruction time and again. Sebastian can make him come by playing with his ass alone, or they watch each other jerk off, or Sebastian secures his hands to the headboard with his own tie, his to do with as he pleases. Sebastian's had him every which way; with his legs around his shoulders, on top of him, on the floor, the backseat of his car, the shower, anywhere they knew they wouldn't be caught; on his back, on his stomach, on all fours.

On his knees.

Begging and cowering.

He's tasted Sebastian in his mouth, swallowed and spit, felt semen drip down his chin, his stomach, out of his ass into the sheets, and he– he can't give it up anymore. Not the release. Not the specific body providing it.

He'd denied himself many things for as long as he can remember , hadn't made any connections because he didn't know how. Who would've taught him? No one ever told him his desires were allowed, no one taught him how to love, how to be with another man. He mostly stuck to his own hand, the few times he did sleep with someone meant to be experimental, to figure out what he liked and what he didn't like — and he didn't like the idea of willingly giving himself over to a stranger, relinquishing the control so meticulously holding his skin together.

Yet that's exactly what he does when Sebastian calls.

It would be easier to walk away if Sebastian left him a shell of a man, a shadow even, but when they're together he doesn't think. He surrenders to his lust, to a man determined to take his control from him and mold it into sin. Something red. _So red_.

Sebastian owns and takes and dominates and never leaves any room for doubt. In Sebastian's hands he'll be teased, Sebastian will ease back and leave him wanting, make him beg, but he'll never deny him the pleasure of the most exquisite pain.

.

"You look better without any gel in your hair," Sebastian says in a haze of cigarette smoke.

He leaves Sebastian's remark unanswered; his opinion hardly matters. It's bad enough he feels more exposed with his curls loose than he's so far felt in Sebastian's presence, that Sebastian's fingers root through his hair as often as he can, just to taunt him.

He straps his backup gun to his ankle and puts on his pants, buttons up his shirt in the hopes it might chase away some of Sebastian's scent — the room's still drenched in it, a mixture of them both, and he doubts that it will ever leave him again.

"What made you this way?" Sebastian adds, almost as if an afterthought, one that hadn't occurred until he chose to ignore him.

Punishment. In a way.

"This way?" He sits down on the bed, stepping into his shoes, carefully avoiding Sebastian's question; they're always too direct, always with the intent to reveal, expose, leave him a little more naked than he's been up until now.

Purposely teasing around pressure points an enemy should never be able to locate.

Sebastian pushes a kiss to his shoulder. "A killer."

His fingers shake around his shoelaces. How can Sebastian speak the noun so callously, like he'd made a conscious choice, like it was ever a choice to begin with? Circumstances made him into this. Their world forced this onto him.

"Someone tried to kill me when I was ten," he says, the man's face delineated with molten charcoal lines in his memory. All he ever sees is the gun, the deafening sound of the cornfield giving way to a body, Rachel's arms around his chest so tight it cut off his breathing. "I killed him first."

Five seconds tick by between the breath Sebastian draws in and his next question.

"Was it a hit?"

 _Was it us?_ the question echoes, _Was it my father?_ but Sebastian can rest assured that if it had been a hit ordered by the Smythe patriarch, few of them would still be standing.

"The Sylvestris."

His father tore through that crime family like napalm, burned down houses with people inside, cut up bodies even though he didn't usually get his hands dirty, flayed the skin off their patriarch.

When your enemies go to ground, one should take the ground they run to.

Sun Tzu's _Art of War_.

His grandparents' house wasn't only a safe haven for him and Rachel, but for his father too, for Cooper. The Sylvestris had sought to destroy that. Much of their past with the Sylvestris lay tainted by blood and bodies, tumultuous since both the families settled here over a century ago. His father had underestimated their greed.

 _Our fathers know jack shit_.

Sebastian's words echo deep in the depths of his own mind. Perhaps he was right all along. What do their fathers know? What do their transgressions matter in a world of blood and guts and untimely death? The handshake that sealed their truce with the Smythes grew weaker the more time he spent with Sebastian. What did it mean?

"I'm sorry," Sebastian says, a sudden gravity to his voice.

"What's there to be sorry for?"

His trauma isn't Sebastian's, it's not even Rachel's; he got broken, something split his heart and soul in half so that everything that came after could never be like it had been before. He carries the weight of that night, the consequences of his actions, and he'd do it every single time, even if he could relive that day. He'd choose protecting Rachel over preserving his sanity for all the days to come.

What would his sanity be worth without Rachel, anyway?

"Shit, Blaine, you were ten years old."

Sebastian sits up beside him, dressed only in the sheets they soiled, speaks his name like they're familiar with each other the way that friends are, the spaces their bodies occupy mundane and everyday, like it's a conversation between any two guys with normal lives who've started an affair that'll lead somewhere. But they're enemies. Sebastian doesn't know him, never will, won't learn the outlines of his trauma the way he's come to understand it — just like he won't learn the depths of Sebastian's relationship with his family, simply because that would be considered treason on both sides of the Corridor.

He doesn't care about Sebastian.

He never will.

"I did what I needed to do."

Sebastian fishes his pants from the floor and quickly steps into them. "Is that what you tell yourself?" he asks, standing tall in front of him, looking down on him, demanding answers he doesn't have. He couldn't say what drives him beyond the darkness colored inside his chest. "What, when you're out there shooting people? When you shot Hunter?"

He stands up, too short to match Sebastian's height, so he turns his back, shoulders his shame, the souls, death personified while Sebastian's question imposes itself.

There's his pressure point.

His blind obedience to his father's orders.

"It doesn't give me any satisfaction if that's what you mean. I'm just–" He buttons his sleeves to busy his hands, "–good at it."

His training kept him focused, exhausted him to the point where his nightmares disappeared if it meant recharging after a heavy day — all so he could start over again the day after. He didn't sleep for a year after the shooting, insomnia spun into his everyday routine, into his bones, up at all hours to learn more, become stronger; hand-to-hand combat, gun training, something that passed as homeschooling.

"It's the day you went color blind, isn't it?"

His shoulders tense under an icy chill, even though Sebastian draws closer, his chest to his back, and his hands squeeze around his shoulders.

Lips push against his hair.

How has he given Sebastian this power? How has Sebastian figured out all these things about him when they haven't talked, they haven't shared anything but each other's bodies, and he's certain the Smythes don't know about what happened at his grandparents' house? If they even knew about the house at all.

If he weren't so convinced Sebastian's shame mirrored his own, he'd think him a spy.

He's let him too close. He risks too much.

He forces his pistol between their bodies, where it settles snug and reassuring at the small of his back. "I wish I could hate you."

Sebastian's hands fall away. "You do."

He takes a deep breath. "Not enough."

And then he leaves, closes another door, one he'll find himself coming back to in due time.

Sometimes he wishes Sebastian had pulled the trigger, that he'd had the strength to say no to him, that they did consider each other a mortal enemy and stayed away; Sebastian encompassed all his regrets and all his desires, his loss of control all spun into a single body.

If he truly hated Sebastian he'd have the sense to walk away, to draw his gun, push it against Sebastian's forehead and pull the trigger for ever assuming he could force him down to his knees.

But he comes back for more, all the same.

When he enters the house, the front door unlocked while security cameras register his every move, the first thing he hears are Rachel's pleasant giggles touching every corner of the house. He smiles, adopting the ease of home, and tracks his sister's mirth to the living room.

He never thought he'd find her locking lips with her violin teacher.

He averts his eyes, initially, until the hard crash of another's mouth imprints on his own lips and he looks again, the kisses Rachel trades with Jesse short and sweet, interspersed with both their laughter. A hand caresses lovingly down his spine, and he shakes his head, turning around to find no one there but a memory. A sin.

A gun falls weighty into his right hand, the six-shooter his grandfather forced into his hand.

 _What made you this way? A killer?_

"Blaine?" Rachel calls.

He startles but a moment, before he's hurrying up the stairs with Sebastian's question nipping at his heels.

In rare moments of clarity he can see it bright as day, how that night didn't make him a killer, he did that all by himself , through his training and his inability to see anything but the darkness of the cornfield. A reflection of his own fears.

Despite the shrinks his father paid for, despite all the therapies he tried, that night haunts him — the demon enveloping him every waking moment.

He walks over to the bed and slips his Smith & Wesson underneath the pillow, sitting down to disarm completely. His mom has no care for guns and would prefer them gone from the house altogether, but the only courtesy he and his father can give her is keeping them out of sight.

His fingers shake around his ankle holster, recalling how his hands had been tied together over his head no half an hour ago, Sebastian's fingers curling inside him, his mouth hot and greedy all over him.

His feet start tapping out a nonsensical rhythm.

"Blaine?" comes Rachel's sweet singsong voice, and he thought he'd berate her; he had a mind to yell at her for being so stupid with her music teacher, for drawing another boy into their world who doesn't belong and who'll end up breaking her heart.

But then something else Sebastian said comes to mind.

 _You're the only one who understands._

Maybe in some twisted way it couldn't have been anyone but Sebastian. He has no right to judge Rachel when she'd kill him should she find out about Sebastian, should she learn he's been questioning his reasoning and every excuse that keeps leading him there. He's so far down the rabbit hole he should consider learning that new language.

But he's not sure he could even if he were to try.

 _It's the day you went color blind, isn't it?_

He buries his face in the palm of his hands.

"What's wrong?" Rachel asks, settling down by his side.

Sebastian had questioned his sanity like he had for years. How can he be anything but insane after what happened? After seeing what he saw? After having lost what he had? He'd been ten years old and he shot a man, one of the men who'd stalked into the safest place on earth and killed his grandparents. The people who raised him.

How can he be anything but insane?

"Do you think I'm broken?" he chokes out. Untouchable. Unlovable. Split in two.

"I think you've seen too much." Rachel's hand lands on his back, rubbing circles that unspool some of the hurt, whisk away the demons if for a moment. "And you expose yourself to it every time dad orders you to."

"It's my duty," he says, a word he's been conditioned to fall back on. "My birthright."

"Now you sound like him."

Yes. They are his father's words.

Rachel draws an arm around him, her head landing on his shoulder, and he turns into her; her undeniable warmth and affection, things he could never give her in return. He kisses her hair, like he's learned to do.

"That night changed us, Blaine."

 _Blaine, you were ten years old._

It seems centuries ago that he and Rachel ran around in the open fields behind their grandparents' house, playing tag or hide-and-seek, sitting on their grandfather's lap. Those parts are harder to remember, because all he sees is a man in their room and Rachel's pristinely white nightdress.

Her bloody footprints on their bedroom floor.

Rachel looks up, smiling. "Your curls."

"I–" He stutters. "Yeah."

 _You look better without any gel in your hair._

He hadn't counted on getting caught in his room before he'd taken another shower, hoping to not only wash away Sebastian this time, but the bitter taste of their conversation. He should learn Sebastian's pressure points too. Maybe then Sebastian wouldn't get to him so easily.

"Rachel, what are you doing with Jesse?" he asks, both as a means to change the subject and as a question he needs to ask. He's seen her moon over a boy before, and the heartbreak that'd followed he'd felt as his own. There's nothing he wouldn't do to protect Rachel, even from her own choices.

Rachel casts down her eyes. "I like him."

"After Finn–"

"Jesse's different," Rachel says, her hazel eyes burning with a conviction he's scarcely witnessed. "He won't run."

Finn Hudson had run. There are boys out there who don't even talk to Rachel because they fear their father, or him, or their entire organization. Why would Jesse be any different? He doesn't know the bodies that lay the foundations for this empire, the people who had to die for their name to start striking fear in those who heard it.

 _You're the only one who understands._

"Maybe we'll elope instead," Rachel jokes, extending a hand down the rabbit hole so he won't dive in.

"Don't say that."

"I know," Rachel sighs, "Daddy would chase us to the ends of the earth."

No. Their father would probably let her leave; their mom would make sure he did. But he can't stand to hear it from his twin sister, his one tether to a gentler world, one he stains with his blood-red hands each time she asks him to speak the name.

 _Rodriguez_ , the last one.

Unlike him, Rachel remembers each one of his victims.

"But maybe it'd be worth it," Rachel adds, a rebellious afterthought, one their grandmother would've dared utter too.

"What would be worth it?"

Rachel looks at him long and hard, brushing his curls away from his forehead. How can running be worth it if rewarded with being pulled back into this world? Why would she take the risk if she thought their father's wrath that great? Why would she tempt danger, if the outcome would be—

Self-annihilation.

"Being free," Rachel whispers, and stands again, headed for the door that's not an exit, not an escape, but a viable option for her to take.

 _I wish I could hate you._

No. Deep down he wishes for something a lot more terrifying, something he denies himself consciously, something he can't ever have.

Who would he be, without the injury of that night?

.

He receives a text from Sebastian – _Azure. 10:30 tonight?_ – in the middle of one of his father's amicable business meetings. There were a few of these every week, short half hour talks his father had with the proprietors of some of the bars he owned, high-ranking politicians he paid, people with stakes in his father's business.

The purpose of these meetings, if they can be called that, was to put people at ease, give status updates on projects, and gauge his employees' contentment.

He'd been privy to these talks as far back as he can remember. His clearest memory was of one meeting where his brother sat on his father's lap while profits were being discussed, and he sat next to his father's desk playing with Lego bricks. He can't have been older than two.

Back when his father didn't consider him broken.

"Blaine," his father calls.

Blinking a few times, he sees the room's been cleared and he's certain he shook a few hands, but it's all passed him in a blur. He texted Sebastian back – _11:00_. – because he promised Rachel he'd take her out to dinner. He'll have to do his best not to focus on what's coming later tonight, when he'll sit down at his regular table at Azure, have a drink or two, and then disappear in the back.

Sebastian's set under his skin like mercury poisoning and he doesn't want a cure.

"Are you alright, son?"

"I haven't been sleeping very well," he says, enough white lies at the ready to last him a lifetime; this one isn't so much a lie as it is an old truth regurgitated to fit his purposes.

"Ask your mom to get you those sleeping pills again."

His father stands up behind his desk, urging him to come closer.

"I need you well rested," his father says, and eases a hand over his shoulder, a gesture so rare he turns into a ten-year old again. His father had kept him close after the death of his grandparents, closer than he'd ever kept Cooper, but their relationship changed in the weeks that followed. The same carefree boy who'd run into the cornfield with his sister hadn't come out, and hadn't shown since.

Why this sudden turnaround, then?

"I'm visiting one of our developments in two weeks," his father says, his dark eyes pinning him down, a force of nature to be reckoned with like his father before him. "I'd like you by my side."

There was a time he desperately needed to hear those words.

A time long past.

"Of course, father," he answers still, because he's not allowed any other.

"You can go." His father squeezes his shoulder. "We're done here."

Not for the first time he exits his father's office with a voice whispering near his ear; what would the great Landon Anderson do should he find out whose bed he tumbles into?

Rachel might escape with her picture perfect violin teacher, who kisses her nose sweetly and whispers love confessions while she plays the strings.

But he never would.

.

Later that same week, he's sat at his usual table at Azure, neglecting the whiskey sour Adam had brought him twenty minutes ago. He'd waited to hear from Sebastian all day, to savor the anticipation of their next hungry act, but no texts came, and each one of his had been ignored.

After three, he'd given up.

Yet he finds Sebastian idling in that same corner at the club. Why hasn't he heard from him? Why is he here if not to unwind? And what better way to do that than in the backroom they've appropriated for all their offenses?

He catches Sebastian's eyes and makes a show of placing his cellphone on top of the table, but Sebastian ignores the hint.

Is it another game? Is he meant to beg?

He downs his drink in one go, cracks his knuckles.

At a complete loss for what to do.

This hasn't happened before. Sebastian doesn't reject, he never says no, he's the instigator of all this, and he shouldn't be allowed to dismiss him. They're both players in the same game and neither of them can opt out, not after everything, not after stripping naked in front of each other.

It's maddening to think Sebastian's asserting power he's consciously given him.

He can reclaim it.

He has to.

For the first time in all their meet-ups at the club, he sends Sebastian's decoy a key.

"Number 7?" Adam asks unprompted, the key resting on the serving platter subtly lowered to the table. "You two seem to be getting along."

He wonders if Adam's selectively blind to what's been happening right under his nose, if it has anything to do with the power his name and Sebastian's holds, or if they're honestly fooling the world. Maybe a Smythe and an Anderson hooking up sounds as absurd to everyone else as it would their fathers.

Adam winks. "You know, you might consider exchanging phone numbers."

"Are you tired of seeing me, Adam?"

He doesn't miss the hint of fear that flashes in Adam's eyes.

"My father wouldn't approve," he amends, because Adam's been good to him, kind, maybe even a little flirty, and he doesn't deserve getting caught in the intricate web he's been weaving for months.

"That I understand all too well."

And as Adam speaks, he watches the Brit's eyes slide across the room toward Sebastian. Is that the lie Sebastian served Adam, then? That his father didn't approve of their relationship? Clearly Sebastian's nighttime escapades don't bother Smythe senior that much; Sebastian may be engaged to a proper lady, but that hasn't stopped him from frequenting Azure, from flaunting his lifestyle up and down the Corridor with little regard to who took notice.

Sebastian's sole true secret is him; everything that happens in that backroom, everything that transpires while their bodies clash and tear at each other until they bleed. Another reason it had to be him. An affair can only survive by the graces of how well both participants keep secrets. They both stand to lose the same things. Their complicity in their acts lives on equal ground.

"Thanks," he says, and gets up, heading to the back of the club, to the long dark hallway that leads to a dozen or so rooms; who else might hide behind these doors? Who else locks their exits to the outside world once they step through?

He inserts the key into the door labeled nr°7, turns the lock, soon inside a familiar dark room.

He locks the door behind him. House rules.

His shoulders crawl with an odd sense of foreboding, and he starts pacing the room in order to shake it.

He takes off his jacket and drapes it over a chair in the corner, loosens his tie around his neck. Sebastian is all he can think about, everything they've done to each other in this room, everything they might still do. Will it ever be enough? Will it ever be over? Will he reach his fill before they can't go back?

 _Where is Sebastian?_

A full twenty minutes have passed by the time he hears the lock snap in the door, and he's still convinced it's all some elaborate play to get him all wound up, to get him frustrated to no end so the release can be all the sweeter.

But Sebastian leaves his key dangling in the door without locking it.

That's not how this goes.

"We're not doing this tonight," Sebastian says, his shoulders sloped, buckling underneath the weight he means to throw off every time he steps through that door.

"Then why are you here?" he asks, coming dangerously close to that question he's been trying to avoid at all cost. He's here for Sebastian's body, and he means to take what he wants, closing the distance between them with a few steps.

Sebastian pushes at his chest. "Not tonight, Anderson."

He laughs, because for once, it's amusing. Sebastian started this, and he's getting exactly what he wanted. Blaine Anderson served to him on a platter. Putty in his hands. There are many who wished they could have the same.

He moves in closer again, reaches a hand for Sebastian's belt, but Sebastian catches his wrist.

"I'm not in the mood," Sebastian says, while his eyes and face falter and he idles over to the bed, where he runs a hand through his hair, brings his elbows to his knees, and settles like a statue.

If he's not in the mood then why is he here? Why did he step through the door?

Sebastian sighs. "I thought–"

He easily decodes the layers of Sebastian's short reply. He thought to erase his responsibilities, thought to defy his father, even though no one will ever find out what they got up to in here. If Sebastian helps him fend off his demons he gives Sebastian something in return. An excuse, perhaps. A way out, even if it would be a horrible one.

Sebastian has the same gun to his head his father keeps cocked against his.

"You know I've never killed a man." Sebastian taps his foot impatiently, staring holes into the door, as if any moment the cavalry could break through it.

Not an exit. But a spot marked X for others to find.

He sits down on the bed, unable to read the melancholy that's taken over Sebastian. What would it matter to him that Sebastian's never killed? He'd already guessed he was an amateur at firearms, and there was little technique to his hand-to-hand. So Sebastian wasn't a fighter. He would never consider that a bad thing.

"Sebastian," –he speaks the name in a foreign tongue, because they're not familiar with each other the way that friends are, and this isn't any conversation between two random guys who happen to have started an affair– "What happened?"

"My dad and I had a long talk this morning." Sebastian draws in a deep breath. "About the future. About my duties once I–"

It dawns on him the way it only could on people like them, sons close to their fathers' fortunes, cursed by the inevitability of heritage.

"Once you take over."

Sebastian on his father's throne. The patriarch of the Smythe family with a wedding ring around his finger. Quinn Fabray at his side. Ruler of the West.

"You'll be able to order people to kill for you."

"People like you."

He expels a breath for the sole purpose of the bodily function. When his eyes meet the boy's next to him Sebastian's shine with what he loathes to recognize as tears. Their relationship doesn't extend to this, this pitiful excuse of understanding, of measuring in which ways their lives are the same. It hurts to think about, how wonderfully different their lives have been up until now and how terrifyingly identical — he the killer, Sebastian the runner, both unlikely heirs.

His father will never give him his throne, not after all that's happened, but he might have, once upon a time. And Sebastian's brother, Alexander, might not step aside without a fight.

"He's sick," Sebastian says. "My dad."

He stops breathing.

"He's getting treatment but the doctors don't know if it'll help."

Sebastian's gaze falters in favor of staring at his hands again; he shouldn't be telling him this, it's not his place, it goes against everything they've been taught. He shouldn't listen so attentively, either, because there's no thought in his mind that thinks about betraying Sebastian's confidence and tell his father.

Because he gets it.

Sebastian feels the unbearable weight of time breathing at his neck. Like Cooper must have.

Soon, perhaps far sooner than either of them are ready for, Sebastian will take his father's place, he'll be the one shaking hands with Landon Anderson. Sebastian won't just be an enemy; he'll usurp his father's sins as he ascends his newfound place in the world order.

Sebastian will be the one who killed his brother.

It all leads to one simple conclusion.

"We have to stop, don't we?"

Sebastian buries his face in his hands. "It's too dangerous," he says, the word incongruous with all their trespasses, not quite right to describe the tin and taint of all the wrongs they've done. It couldn't last. He knew that before even entertaining the thought of his body melting into Sebastian's. He thought he'd be the one to destroy it, stain it charcoal and ashen until Sebastian realized he wasn't worth the trouble.

It couldn't last. Sebastian must've known that too, before ever kissing him in that alley.

They've tempted self-destruction long enough.

Sebastian doesn't apologize. He doesn't accuse him of only wanting his body. It's been clear what this was from the beginning, ever ending. This will be a far less violent ending than the one either of them had envisioned.

They sit side by side, staring out in front of them, for close to an hour. Even if he were the type to talk he wouldn't know what to say or how to say it; he wants to tell Sebastian it's okay, that they both knew this was coming and shouldn't have started this in the first place, that it lasted for as long as it could because they both ignored who they were, where they came from, and what their last names meant around here.

He's an Anderson.

Sebastian's a Smythe.

Any interaction between a Smythe and an Anderson that isn't business or murder is unthinkable.

Sebastian leans in and pushes a kiss to his temple.

Then he leaves, without a word.

He lets the imprint of Sebastian's kiss linger for another hour, a small eternity in this room, before he too stands up and leaves the room.

Locks the door behind him.

For good, this time.

.

.

 **tbc**

.


End file.
